But lately, they’ve been getting more and more serious, and it’s got me worried. Not for the quality of the site, but rather for the state of the world.

One of the articles that first got me concerned was 5 Apologies to the Cops Who Beat Me Up for No Reason, written in response to one of the writers being raided by the police by mistake. I had heard of this sort of thing happening, thanks to the work of Radley Balko, but it had never happened to anyone I knew, or even anyone I had ever heard of. Then it happened to Soren Bowie. I think that was when the possibility of being attacked by the police as the result of a stupid mistake became real for me. I had seen all the cases documented by Balko, but then Soren laid out exactly what happened to him in that gently sarcastic style I love so much, and I began to emotionally understand the terrible reality. If the cops could bust up one of my favorite comedy writers, then they could bust up anybody.

But just this week, it’s gotten really bad. First came this article, 4 Weird Decisions That Have Made Modern Cops Terrifying (the title and the URL on that one both got changed. I believe the original title referenced storm troopers). The takeaway from that article is that cops are utterly alienated from the people and communities they’re supposed to be protecting, so they have no empathy to prevent them from just attacking citizens. Then came 7 Important Details Nobody Mentions About Ferguson (the original title was all about farts… read the article, it’ll make sense). Farts aside, the takeaway from that article is that the cops in Ferguson just cannot stop lying. They have given us no reason to trust them at all, and they keep arresting journalists and shooting people for no reason.

What I’m getting from all this is that cops don’t trust normal citizens like me, that they can’t be trusted, that they wield vast power over us (both legal power and firepower) and they’re hopelessly clumsy in using that power. This is the state of modern police work in America. There’s no getting away from it.

This is intolerable. If this is the best that our police force can do, then we’d be better off with no police at all. I say it’s time to consider abolishing cops entirely.